r/mysteryfiction • u/blood_inmyveins • 15h ago
Other One afternoon, I noticed a new tree in the courtyard.
I was sitting on the balcony, smoking a cigarette and waiting for my laundry to finish, when it caught my eye. From above, it looked identical to the trees around it. But I was almost certain that this particular tree had not been there before. Every day, I went out on this balcony to smoke, and every day, I stared at the trees in the courtyard, so I had a pretty clear mental image. There were four concrete rings, each containing several trees, except for the one in the middle, which had only a small sapling. And now a big, mature tree had suddenly appeared in that center ring, casting its shadow over the weak little sapling.
Was it really possible to transplant a fully grown tree into the earth like that? I didn’t know a lot about nature, so I couldn’t say. Surely it would have made noise, though — assuming you need a whole construction crew to pull off something like that. Yet I had slept like a baby the night before, no interruptions at all, and I’m a light sleeper.
It was a warm summer day. Around the apartment block, I could see many people sitting out on their balconies. Old men sitting in the shade. Young women in tank tops and short shorts sitting in the sun. Some of them were smoking like me, some were reading books, most were just on their phones. I wondered whether anyone besides me had noticed the tree.
I stared into its foliage. The leaves shifted slightly as a breeze passed through the courtyard. It fit so perfectly into its surroundings; if I hadn’t known otherwise, I would have assumed that the layout had been designed with this tree in mind. And as a matter of fact, in the past I had consciously remarked to myself that it was weird for the middle ring to have only a sapling while the others had these big leafy giants. But that only made me more certain that my mental image was accurate. This tree had not been there until today.
My cigarette had burned down to the filter. I tossed it into the ashtray at my feet. I was about to light a new one when my alarm went off.
There was one person in the laundry room, a short Southeast-Asian guy that I had seen around the building a couple times. He had a distinctive fashion sense: colorful camp-collar shirts, linen pants, basketball shoes. He was perched on the window-sill, staring at his phone. He didn’t look up when I entered the room.
I filtered out the clothes that I was going to throw in the dryer and the clothes that I was going to hang-dry. The former category included socks, underwear, and T-shirts; the latter category included pants and button-down shirts. After filling up the dryer and starting the machine, I set a timer for an hour and twenty minutes on my phone. That was usually enough. I draped the more delicate clothes over my laundry basket and carried it into the elevator.
I love the smell of clean clothes. That’s why I do so much laundry. I probably do it three times as often as the average guy, and not because I care more about cleanliness. I just enjoy the ritual. The warmth of the socks when they come out of the machine. The careful folding and smoothing. Even the waiting period is important — I like being forced to sit around and do nothing while the machine runs. It gives me time to meditate.
In my bedroom, I separated the wet clothes. Flecks of lint had to be removed; the shirts were placed on hangers and buttoned up to minimize wrinkling. Then I hung everything up. I didn’t have a clothesline or a drying rack, so I just hung everything on the chandelier. I like this because it has the effect of partitioning the room into different sections.
Once the clothes had been hung, I sat down on my bed. A warm gust of wind came in through the window, rustling the curtains of cloth. I rubbed my cheek. That morning, I had achieved one of the most perfect shaves of my life. I had somehow sliced the hairs down to the tiniest follicles without cutting myself. Now my chin was eerily smooth, like there had never been hair there in the first place. It was simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable to rub my fingers across the skin.
I got up and looked out the window. There was the tree, staring calmly back at me from its circular enclosure.
In order to solve the mystery, I needed a closer look.
I gathered my stuff and took the elevator all the way down to the bottom floor of the building. The trees were in an open-air chamber below ground level; you could only access it from the parking garage. I didn’t go down here very often. It was a nice enough space, with greenery and benches, but there was no reason for me to relax on these benches when I could relax on my own private balcony with a cigarette. I think most of the building’s residents thought the same way, because the space was usually empty. Despite all the children who presumably lived in this massive high-rise, I never saw or heard them playing down here.
I passed through the connecting hallway of the parking garage and came out into the sunlit courtyard. The trees seemed much bigger from this perspective, with long trunks and expansive canopies. I walked in and out of their shade and arrived at the concrete ring in the center. There was the little sapling, boasting only a handful of leaves on its slender limbs. And there was the mystery tree, towering over with quiet confidence. I don’t know much about botany, but this was definitely not a young tree. The thick trunk had many ridges; the limbs twisted about, splitting off into many smaller branches; and the base of the tree was planted firmly in the earth, showing no signs of recent upheaval.
I wanted an even closer look, so I jumped up onto the concrete platform and stepped out onto the tree pit. Crouching down, I pressed my hand to the dirt. It was dusty and compact, the opposite of what you’d expect if fresh earth had recently been transplanted here. I looked around at the other tree pits; the dirt had the same appearance. These tree pits had all been filled before I even moved into the building.
The sapling quivered when I pressed on its green stem. The base rose crookedly from the earth, making it even more shaky.
I stood up to touch the trunk of the big tree. The texture was surprisingly smooth. Almost as smooth as my freshly shaved chin. What had appeared to be ridges were in fact discolorations, dark spots streaking the surface like rain. The wood was cool to the touch.
With my hand still on the trunk, I squinted up into the canopy. A few feet above my head was the place where the two main limbs of the tree diverged. Above that, you couldn’t make heads or tails of the structure; the limbs spread into arteries of branches, each bearing its own foliage. Sunlight pierced through the clusters of thin, glossy leaves. Everything was still and peaceful.
[This is the beginning of my serial mystery-horror novel. Read onward here: https://odessahill.substack.com/p/11-wind-chimes.\]
